Chapter 24
SANTIAGO
The Crimson Shrike drifted in the murk of the Cerulean Veil, its battered hull gleaming ruby under fractured starlight.
Once a fearsome pirate stronghold, now a wounded beast hanging in space, bleeding yet still clinging to life.
The Red Skulls’ station appeared held together by rust, wire, and duct tape.
Santi stood on the dorsal platform of the última Bruto, his violet-gold spectral form glimmering behind the shimmer cloak.
The corvette’s engines were idle, masked from every scanner within a few thousand klicks. No pings. No signals, not even a shadow.
Beside him, Miral ran silent feed taps, patching through station comms. ‘I’ve looped their internal cams. You have ten minutes before redundancy kicks in.’
Kaal grunted, checking his blade-locks. ‘Ten’s more than we need.’
He and Santi landed on an unsealed thermal vent just aft of the Shrike’s habitation wing.
Metal groaned beneath their boots as they slipped through maintenance shafts, past old bio signs and half-burnt gang insignia.
Santi’s mind scarcely registered them.
He was hunting her, his nostrils flaring to detect her.
The corridor ahead shimmered with dim-frequency red pulse lights, yellowed and cobwebbed with age.
The place reeked of engine grease, sweat, and malted liquor.
Signs of a pirate crew still clinging to memory more than glory.
But that wasn’t what caused a lurch in Santi’s heartbeat.
It was the unique scent that hit his airwaves, her foil that sent a lurch through him.
She was here, inside, the Crimson Shrike.
The station’s walls and girders groaned like a dying animal.
Rust coated the walls. Grime congealed at the base of every air grate.
The corridors stank of spilled coolant and blood that had never been cleaned.
Lights buzzed weakly overhead, shivering in and out of voltage.
All around them was decay, and beneath that, hunger.
Miral’s voice whispered through Santi’s neural node.
‘The northwest corridor leads to command-tier storage. She’s not chipped, but I’ve got a weakened thermal signature, an anomaly moving near the old drone bay. Might be her, it moves like her.’
‘Got it,’ Santi murmured. ‘Kaal, you aim for the control centre and report, brother.’
‘On it.’
Santi peeled off from the Kaal, his shimmer cloak dimming to a whisper.
His body loosened. Then cracked.
Bones rippled, his skin shimmered, and in the blink of a breath, his form dissolved into radiant wolf-shadow.
A beast of amethyst and gold-glow streaked down the hall, paws leaving no trace. No sound. Only heat bleeding into the air behind him.
He darted past flickering hatches, gutted out tech bays, and collapsed quarters where broken pirate gear lay rusting beside unwashed bedding.
Her foil deepened, scents of jasmine, vanilla, and spice.
He shifted back, muscles folding into place, skin knitting over sinew as the shimmer dropped.
He inhaled deeper, her scent now so strong it was a trail.
A shadow flitted in the corridor up ahead.
He moved faster, scarcely audible, slipping into the central hallway.
The silhouette sprinted across the far arch.
Petite, quick, cloaked.
Soleil.
He didn’t think. He reacted and bolted in pursuit, a fast, swift, freakin’ blur.
In two bounds, he was at her rear.
She twisted, but before she had the chance to react, he surged behind her, one arm sweeping around her waist, the other clamping over her mouth.
She gave a muffled gasp, her body instinctively struggling for a heartbeat, and then freezing as she recognized him.
Santi pulled her into a maintenance supply room and kicked the door closed after them.
Metal shelves lined the walls, filled with ragged filters, binding tape, and corroded drone components.
The space was generous, covered with old pressure seals, rusting hydro-valves, and storage crates stacked to the ceiling.
A single weak glow strip hummed overhead, casting dull light over their faces.
Soleil stared at him, eyes dilated with shock.
Sweat and soot streaked her cheeks.
Her lips trembled with half-formed words.
Santi stared at her, breathing hard.
The heat of her in his arms, the scent of her skin, the ache of everything he’d been holding in, almost knocked the wind out of him.
She blinked. Her breath caught. ‘Santi?’
He didn’t speak.
He just raked his spectral eyes over her torn clothes, then up to her face, jolting in reaction.
Fokk, she was beautiful even though dirt smudged across her cheek and a cut emblazoned itself on her temple.
He hadn’t seen her in days, and still, she made his entire soul lurch with need for her.
‘You’re here,’ she whispered. ‘You found me.’
He jerked his chin, battling his emotions while keeping his expression cold. ‘I had to.’
Her hand moved toward his chest, then stopped, fingers curling, hesitant.
He stepped back, and her face flushed at his rejection.
‘Where were you running to?’ he growled, his face cold as ice.
‘Getting the fokk out of here,’ she muttered. ‘It’s the best chance I have. Both Vern and Varnok are knocked out, drunk, but if they wake, they’ll find me,’ she said. ‘They can still track every step I take.’
‘How was that going to work out when you escaped?’
‘I have schills to pay a body mod clinic to take the nanites out.’
‘Risky.’
‘Isn’t life so?’
They both knew they weren’t talking about perilous procedures in backwater med centers.
‘You’re not going anywhere until we hash this out,’ he growled.
He raised a hand, and nanites streamed from his wrist comm in a burst of spectral energy, forming a privacy shield around them both.
‘Now they can’t get a signal through to you. Which means we can talk.’
The maintenance room was dim, humming with the quiet pulse of backup systems and coolant vents.
Shelves lined the walls, stacked with spare valve joints and fractured plasma cores. But all he saw, all he sensed, was her.
Pressed against the far wall, breath shallow, face pale and streaked with grime and guilt.
‘You played me,’ Santi snarled. ‘You took everything I gave you, my protection, my faith, and set fire to it.’
She flinched, but didn’t look away. ‘I didn’t have a choice.’
‘Bullshit.’
He advanced, as pain twisted in his chest like barbed wire.
‘I opened my home to you. My heart too. I trusted you, Soleil. I fokkin’ adored you,’ he bit out, each word searing his throat. ‘What did you give me in return? Betrayal, a bomb, and death. Forget the millions of schills for repairs, two of my people are gone because of you.’
Her knees almost buckled, and she pressed her palms to her face, eyes tearing up. ‘Please, don’t do this.’
‘Nada,’ he growled. ‘You don’t get to cry now. You don’t get to weep like you didn’t have a way out. You were with me. You had a thousand ways to stop that shit show. You could’ve written a note. Sent a message through the droids. Whispered to in bed.’
Her utterance was raw and pleading. ‘He listens all the time. He monitors me. He turns up my pain receptors if I disobey.’
‘You might’ve tried harder.’ His rasp broke then, hoarse with disbelief.
‘I was terrified.’ Her voice trembled. ‘I was drowning, Santi. They’ve been in my head for years. I don’t know where I end and they begin anymore. I wasn’t trying to use you, I was not of my own mind.’
He scoffed, a bitter, raw sound. ‘So when we made love, you were not in your senses.’
‘Nada. I didn’t mean it like that. What we exchanged was genuine. Until he took over, but the passion we shared was, and still is, authentic for me.
‘Fokk you,’ he growled, his soul agony speaking out, raging.
‘Please believe me,’ she begged.
‘Why?’
‘Vern chose to punish me for standing up to him.’
Santi leaned in. ‘So The Sombra, its dead crew members and my fokkin’ heart were just collateral damage?’
His fury was so palpable, she flinched.
‘I see you refuse to understand my reasons, that if I’d had my way, I would never have chosen to hurt you.’
‘Like I said earlier, you did have a choice. You allowed your fear of pain and dread to override your option to do the right thing. You got distracted by your past, now I forgot your tomorrow, with me.’
‘You really can’t see I had no way to know if and when Vern was listening, and how he’d react.’
‘I don’t know what to count on,’ he snarled. ‘Or even to believe you at all.’
She winced and took a shaky inhale as they stared at each other, at an impasse.
Santi growled, shoulders shaking, fists clenched by his sides.
So much of him wanted to pull her in.
To press her against his chest and tell her none of it mattered. That their shared connection was enough, but it wasn’t.
‘I don’t know if I’ll ever trust you again,’ he rasped, slicing his eyes to the floor because if he looked at her, he’d unravel. ‘You brought chaos into my world. I don’t know how to come back from that.’
A silence cracked open between them.
‘I understand,’ she whispered. ‘I wish I had the chance to undo it all. I’d give anything to go back to how we were.’
When he could stand to glance up, his eyes met her wrecked face, eyes misted over, lips trembling, as if she were scarcely holding herself together.
Still, she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
‘Fokk Soleil, why does it still hurt so damn much?’ he growled, almost choking on the words, his heart slamming in his chest.
‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘It hurts me too, honey.’
They stood frozen, a pair of broken souls staring across a canyon neither knew how to cross.
Santi didn’t know whether he wanted to howl at the stars or fall into her arms and forget the world.
SOLEIL
Scarletta, where are you?
The sing-song voice in her head preceded a bang as the supply room door exploded inward, the floor shaking with the force of the breach.
Burgundy alert strips strobed along the walls. She turned, trembling, as the klaxons cut short.
Red Skull soldiers surged through, howling war cries, armed with aging blasters, vibroblades, and sheer madness.
Behind them, Vern strolled, his eyes gleaming with anticipation.